


And I Am Not Resigned

by Menzosarres



Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: F/F, Fix-It, Post-Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 07:10:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Menzosarres/pseuds/Menzosarres
Summary: "I married Nick last night" is one heck of a conversation starter. Grace is focused on the "but" she can't figure out how to say. Frankie is focused on semantics.Or maybe they're focused on the same thing.





	And I Am Not Resigned

_...but now I think that might have been a huge mistake._

The all-night thought. The should’ve-been-a-honeymoon thought. Pete Repeat on a loop from the minute she came out here to the minute after she said the first half of the words to right now, while Frankie is sinking down in the sand beside her while she’s not saying anything more than _I married Nick last night_ even when there’s so much more to be said.

I married Nick last night. I married a man I love. Without any kind of show. No performance. No bitterness, no rubbing-it-in, no patching over old wounds. Just me, and him, and a few legal necessities and one simple gold band on my finger (which feels very cold out here, now that I’m holding it up between us. It’s overcast. It’s the breeze, you know. The spray.)

I married Nick last night.

But there’s a but. There’s always a but. And sometimes she says it and sometimes she doesn’t, because somewhere down the line there was a smarmy boss with heavy white eyebrows over swampy, wandering eyes who told her he’d started hearing her say “but there’s just one more thing” in his dreams at night but hey, at least it had taken over from nightmares about his ex-mother-in-law. Except she never liked the thought of her “buts” staring in anyone’s dreams. She’s not going to be anyone’s naysaying nightmare. Not even nightmare improvement. Especially not for men like _that_ , who made it clear that he didn’t like her “buts” because “but” is awful close to “no,” and “no” ruins the kinds of dreams he’d rather be having about her.

It’s been a lot of years since she has had to put up with a boss like that. Since men have thought of her like that, says a smaller voice. Because sometimes, despite herself, she’s taken those kinds of things to heart. The less you admit there’s a “but,” the faster you can get right to fixing things without admitting anything ever went wrong.

But she wants to say it this time. She wants to say “but.”

I married Nick last night, but.

But I didn’t tell you.

But I didn’t talk to you.

But I left here angry with you and angry with myself for being angry with you and angry with myself for dismissing you and here I went and did it all over again.

_...but now I think that might have been a huge mistake._

We all know the kind of choices I make when I’m angry.

Bad ones, she wants Frankie to say. And she wants Frankie to call her out on it, to bring up the fact that she slept in the woods three hallucinations deep into both kinds of moonshine rather than face up to one more bunk-bedded night of Frankie’s appalling attempt at a girl’s trip. She wants them to laugh about her terrible choices, and talk about whether this one is, that. Terrible. A huge mistake.

But she can’t even get out the “but” that’s been on repeat for _hours_ , let alone any of the ones that might be an apology. They’re stuck somewhere between the fact that her huge mistakes are usually someone else’s nightmares and the fact that Frankie can’t even look at her.

Her hip hurts. She sat on that rock too long. She stood up too fast. Tried to run too fast in the loose sand. It’s going to hurt more, getting down beside her, but she does it anyway. Gets as far as the good knee before she has to stall, brace herself, and it doesn’t _not_ strike her where she is, down on one knee in the sand beside Frankie Bergstein, but even though she stalls, several seconds past the ache in her thigh, Frankie doesn’t so much as glance her way, so down she goes. Knees in someone’s sandy footprints. Ass on her heels. Sweater wrapped tight against the wind.

And they’re sitting, and she isn’t saying “but,” and Frankie isn’t saying “bad one, Grace,” And it’s cold. The sand is cold. The spray is cold. Her hands are so, so cold. And back in Casa de Nick, her side of a bed that he said—very gently, very romantically, whispered in her ear as they crossed through the doorway with his hands around her waist—is “all ours, now” must be just as cold, considering how long she’s been out here. Cold and empty. He heard her get up. She’s not capable of that kind of quiet anymore. He didn’t say anything, though. Did that make it worse?

Frankie’s nodding.

That definitely makes it worse. It’s an “I should’ve known” kind of nod. A nod like she expects nothing but this kind of disappointment after any kind of apology from Grace Hanson. Like she agrees: her one-more-things are a nightmare.

Frankie stops nodding. “Partner’s a mean word.”

That’s it? she wants to say. Wants to laugh. The uncomfortable, tension-breaking laugh. Wants to demand worse name-calling than 'mean.' Wants to offer to fetch a seafood tray. Shower me in shrimp and pelt me with the platter. Tell me to wake the fuck up or get the fuck out.

“Who came up with it anyway,” Frankie’s saying instead, because there are few things which can shut up Grace Hanson, but there’s nothing that can shut up Frankie Bergstein. “Partner. Was it the cowboys? I blame the cowboys. I never did trust their hats. Or their guns.”

Oof.

She rocks sideways even though it hurts more, her hip right in the sand, knees protesting the extra inch of sheer.

“But you know who ruined it?”

Frankie’s actually waiting, she realizes after several seconds of silence. Still not looking at her, but she’s demanding words. Maybe she’ll even get to the ones she’s thinking. It’s got to start somewhere.

“Who?” she asks. Is that her voice? It’s so… wobbly. She sounds scared. She sounds old.

“The millennials. They’re the ones. They’re the ones who decided even stupid cowboy words can mean fifteen different things, even really, _really_ important ones, and you know what?”

“What, Frankie.” Now she just sounds tired. And dismissive to boot.

“That ruined it. Doesn’t mean anything anymore. How’re you supposed to know, hm? Howdy, partner. Partner in crime. Grace Hanson, my most Vybrant business partner. Deal me in, partner. You gonna hit that birdie, partner, or are you just gonna let it hit you in the face?”

“Are we talking about badminton?”

“No, Grace, we’re not.”

“Because it suddenly feels like you’re talking about the time you served me a black eye.”

“That’s only because you were checking your phone in the middle of the court during a _very_ intensive rematch with Kay Dee and DJ Ken.”

“I shouldn’t have had to watch where _my_ partner was serving.”

Frankie holds up a hand in her general direction. “Uh! Nuh-uh. There’s a ban on that now.”

“There’s a what now?”

“You know exactly what.”

“No I don’t, Frankie!” She’s graduated from old to dismissive to shrill in under five minutes and the sun’s still only half up. “I have literally no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, well, who’s fault is that.”

Usually, she’d say, “yours,” but it’s not that kind of morning.

“I’ll tell you who.”

“Thank god,” she mutters.

“The millennials.”

She doesn’t feel particularly illuminated. “Not the cowboys?”

Frankie frowns. “Them too.” In silhouette, it’s all in one downturned corner of her lips.

She’s noticed that before. The laugh lines don’t change. Her eyes are always smiling, just a little, too many years of genuine appreciation of life to erase with even three years frowning at Grace. It’s something she’s wished, now and then, she could paint onto her own face as easily as she does her illusion of lingering youth. But what Frankie has is something she never will. No one has figured out how to bottle up genuine optimism for her to buy at Violet Gray or how to charge her up with some good old fashioned battery-operated faith in the good of the world. The closest thing she’ll ever find, she suspects, is sitting beside her in a blue dress that looks like a bathrobe.

“But don’t try to change the subject,” adds the bathrobe-clad joy that still won’t look at her.

“I don’t know what the subject is,” she admits.

“You’re married.”

“Oh.” That subject.

Frankie looks just like she felt, thinking about anything that wasn’t this, the two of them. On this beach. Together. And yeah, there was more to what she was gonna say even _without_ the but. This was supposed to be a “you were right” kind of conversation. An “I kept underestimating you” conversation. A “you don’t need me, I’m a nag and a failure at sticky-note pictionary and I should probably just get out of your way” conversation. But she’s not saying any of that, either.

“I’m all out of congratulations. You know it takes me at least two days after a wedding to recharge my chi.”

“Me too.” She leans forward. Tucks her hands into the crease behind her knees. It should be getting warmer by now, shouldn’t it?

“Then why’d you do it, Grace?”

It’s not her angry Grace. It’s her resigned one.  

“Well, I— He asked. He asked, and I—” She shakes her head. “I love him.” It’s the part of the Pete Repeat answer with the least number of syllables.

“I know _that_.” Frankie’s plucking at her dress-robe. “Doesn’t mean you _marry_ the guy, I mean. Come on. That word’s exactly the same way!”

This should be one of the times she gets it, shouldn’t it? She feels like this loop Frankie’s in about words _matters_ , so she should be making the superhuman effort it takes to follow it down whatever rabbit hole and along every tangent she’s taking it on, but she’s sleepless and a little bit convinced some part of her subconscious rattled loose last night and decided to haunt her with the ghost of face-lifts yet to come, so she can’t. “What word?” she asks, more harshly than she wants to. “The same as what?”

“Love!” Frankie’s hands go up in the air. “And cowboys!” She frowns. “No, you’re the one who got me hung up on cowboys. I just mean. You can say that word a hundred times to a hundred people and it doesn’t mean you have to move out.”

“Who said anything about moving out?” she splutters.

“Well he’s sure as hell not moving in.”

“He’s not moving into the beach house, Frankie.”

“Exactly. Because you’re moving out.”

She untucks her hands. They aren’t getting warmer there anyway. Her fingers are just going to sleep. “Is that what you want?”

“Of course not.” Frankie’s hands rise an inch off her lap and thump back down again. “But I’m not the one who went out and got myself a husband.”

“You got yourself a man and a yurt like a month ago.”

“Yeah, and I moved into it with him. Because that’s what people do when they get men. I wasn’t gonna make him sleep on the couch.”

“Now we both sound like we’re talking about dogs.”

Frankie doesn’t even smile.

“Besides, living on the patio does _not_ count as moving out.”

“Yeah, well. Not all of us buy our men from the breeders. Big business of man’s best friend. Bunch of corporate _fluff_ \- _murderers_. Some of us foster strays. With a yurt. Not some... pedigree penthouse and a half-private island.”

She doesn’t know what to say to that. She manages a strangled laugh. Feels like she has to. It was her bad joke that started this, after all.

Frankie just keeps frowning. “This is all wrong.”

She huffs through her nose. “Tell me about it.”

“No, you stop doing that.”

Frankie almost, _almost_ turns her head while she says it. It was _almost_ eye-contact. She realizes she’s leaning in, her hand heavy on her knee, like if she were a few inches closer, Frankie would be forced to look at her already, or she’d at least be able to make out what’s happening in her head through her eyes. “Stop doing what?”

“I’m supposed to be angry. How come you were allowed to be mad about the yurt, but I can’t be mad about this?”

“You can be. I mean, you have every right to be.”

Frankie frowns at the ocean again. “Yeah, well. It does’t work if you aren’t giving me any guff. Where’s my pushback, Grace Hanson. You don’t want my congratulations and you let me call your new hubby a puppy killer. A puppy-killer puppy. A dopey, pedigree pomeranian. A lapdog of society, capitalism’s favorite canine, a—”

“—point taken, and metaphor officially taken too far.”

“Speak for yourself.”

They’re both very still for a while.

With each passing second, the waves seem closer, louder. Ready to drown out whatever she manages to say next. It’s her turn to stare out at the water. She’s hit some words she doesn’t think she can say to even the side of Frankie’s face. Talk to the waves; it's not like the face wants to listen.

“You’re right, you know. I think I came here for you to yell at me.”

“And when do I ever do that.”

“Every time the ad for selecting the new special flavor of Mountain Dew comes on in the car.”

“Well that’s just sacrilege! Nobody can improve on Mountain Dew, and _especially_ not a radio-voter democracy. Those people can’t be trusted.”

This time, she just waits it out.

“But that’s just yelling.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees it. Frankie’s curls blowing back over her shoulder. Frankie’s chin turning her way. She’s afraid to make any sudden move, to look back at her, to even blink, though the salty wind is going to ruin that any second now. It's already making her eyes water.

“That’s not yelling at you.”

“You do that too,” she says, throat uncomfortably thick. “Literally any time I’m not in the same room where you’re looking for me, but that’s… That’s not really the point, is it. What I meant was, I came here for you to be mad at me, alright?”

“Well that’s silly.”

“No, no it’s not. Well, maybe it is, a little, but—” She’s looking. She didn’t make the conscious decision to turn back towards Frankie but she did it, and finally, they’re talking to each other instead of the sand and the sea. “—I thought… I didn’t think you’d let me say sorry, for one. I thought… maybe you’d yell at me, maybe you’d hate me for going behind your back again, and maybe that’d be… better. Than how we left things. That you’d agree. We did it. We made it out. Hell and back and we’re stronger and more ‘fuck it’ than ever. So strong we don’t need…”  

Her hand settles into the sand by her side, scooping up aimless grains and bits of broken shells and dried up kelp and letting them sift through her fingers.

“Or maybe you’d help me figure out…”

It doesn’t make any sound, falling. Only when she’s digging in, getting little bits of their grassless backyard stuck beneath what's left of her pre-vacation manicure.

Frankie’s hand comes down on the back of hers, pressing down hard, stilling her restless movement. There’s some real weight in it, harsh and constrictive, but it’s also the warmest thing she’s felt all day.

“Figure out what, Grace. Spit it out. Remember, I’m all chi-ed in for the day, so I’m gonna be a godawful guiding star. An angry one at that.”

“Guiding star? What happened to good old-fashioned guru?”

“Leo may have suggested I was being appropriative, calling myself that when I’m not in touch with my own inner light.”

“Hmph. I have never met anyone _more_ in touch with her own inner light. In fact, sometimes I think that’s _all_ you’re in touch with.”

“And sometimes it gets really obvious when you’re stalling.” Frankie pats the back of her hand twice, the way someone might while saying “there, there” to a crying stranger at a funeral.

“Right,” she hears herself whisper. “Um. Right. You, yelling at me or. Or helping me figure out… what I want.”

“Seems like you figured that one out all by yourself.”

Frankie pulls her hand away. She can feel her eyes on the ring. It’s warmer than before Frankie touched it, but the air and the sand feel even colder, now.

“No, no I didn’t. I just said ‘yes.’” The wave of relief at saying that much swamps her, twice as loud and cold as the sea. It’s like being shocked awake, like she can hear her own voice again. “It felt like I’d spent all day saying ‘no.’ To you. To your whiteboard. To the kids. To the fucking sea lions.”

“The sea lions were _not_ fucking, Grace. Do you really think I’d have stayed in the tent and missed another glorious act of nature like that?”

“For your son’s wedding? Yes.”

Frankie’s eyes go wide, and for a second, she wonders if she’s having some kind of epiphany, something that will get her out of the rest of this conversation and into an answer that will make her gut stop feeling heavier than after her first and only Del Taco burrito.

“They _were_ fucking! The sea lions were fucking and _you_ didn’t tell me! Again!”

That’s the last straw. She starts laughing, pained, raw laughter that makes her feel like she’s going to start choking on it. She finally got it, Frankie’s finally yelling at her, and it’s over the _fucking_ sea lions. “No, Frankie, for christ’s sake. This isn’t about the seal lions.”

“Then why are you talking about the sea lions!”

Her lungs ache. She tastes salt deep in the back of her throat. She’s still wheezing out the last of this awful laughter.

“Hey! Cut that out. That’s no laughing matter. That’s a real serious crime you committed, you repeat sea lion offender. I could have you fined for just the false alarm.”

Oh, oh thank _god_ , Frankie’s almost smiling at her.

“If I ever see them doing… that… again, I will call you immediately and ask that you kindly bring me the bleach for my eyeballs. Deal?”

“Shake on it?”

Rolling her eyes, she holds out her hand. They shake.

“Deal, then,” Frankie agrees. “But you aren’t allowed to use it till you’re back at the sink. Bleach is very disruptive to—”

“—this conversation, it seems.”

At her tone, Frankie shifts. For the first time, it really occurs to her that, as uncomfortable as she is right now, Frankie isn’t faring much better. For... not the first time... she’s equal parts grateful and concerned that both of them react to discomfort like this, that they can needle each other until it’s like an itch instead of a pain, and they can laugh. Yeah, sometimes that makes it hard to talk about the real stuff, but she never used to laugh like this. Ever. At any pre-Frankie point in her whole eighty years of life.   

“I’m sorry,” she says. “That I keep talking around this. And getting upset when you let me.”

“Hey. Don’t apologize for _that_. You were finally almost getting us to mutually assured anger.”

“I don’t _want_ mutually assured anger.”

“Well I do! This hurts, Grace!”

Her hand is yanked up from the sand and waved in front of her own face before she realizes what’s happening.

“This is huge!”

“I know.”

“Massive!”

“Well, it’s actually pretty small compared to…”

...this nightmare scenario I was daydreaming where everything was bigger and badder but otherwise kinda looked an awful lot like a what happened when I came back from the vacation I actually _did_ go on where I guess I decided, stupidly, we were better off without each other.

It’s a good thing she ran out of breath before she even _started_ trying to explain that one.

“I’m not talking about the ring and you know it, Grace.” Frankie lets go. Her hand just kind of hangs there for a minute. “We’re supposed to be partners. Partners may mean a hundred and fifty different things but none of them mean you go behind my back when you get married.”

“I know.” She shakes her head and buries her hands behind her knees again. “And that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. That that’s not what I wanted. What I want. That I said yes because all day I’d been telling you ‘no’ and you’d been doing it anyway and you were right! Every time! So I walked out and sat around thinking… Gee. Frankie’s doing so well. I left and Frankie’s doing better than ever. Hell, we both are. So… why not. Why not make this the new… us. A less… _us_ us.”

“Yeah, why not.” Frankie starts to get her feet under her. She can hear the start of the storm-off in her voice alone. “If I’m not dying, why would you even want me around. This is some apology, Grace.”

“Frankie, no.” She reaches out, catches her hand before she get further than a crouch. “The point is, I was wrong. I’m _not_ doing better. I’m the one who’s not doing better. _I’m_ the one you don’t want around.” Her voice catches. “But I’m selfish. I don’t want to not be around.” Frankie’s still not looking at her, still looks a second from pulling away for good. So she digs for Frankie’s words instead, says them as softly and genuinely as she can. “I don’t want to be my own beaches.”

She knows it works when Frankie stiffens. Lets out a huff. “Sure.” She shakes off her hand, but sits back down. “You want to be Nick’s beaches.”

“I still don’t know what that means, but I definitely don’t want that either.”

That earns her an eye roll. “You need to stop saying things you don’t mean, cowboy.” Frankie stretches her legs out in front of her, wiggles her toes to flex a cramp out of her calf.

“I know. That’s how I wound up married. Twice.”

“Or how I spend decades thinking we’re both fabulous forties gals when you were born 1939. That’s the proof right there. This was always gonna go south. If I'd known, I'd've never agreed to live with you in the first place. Nothing good ever came out of the thirties.” She leans back on her elbows and frowns. “Unless you count Sister Rosetta Tharpe inventing rock ‘n’ roll, and people never _do_ count Sister Rosetta Tharpe.”

“Frankie, I’m not following.”

“She was a queer black woman and a musical visionary and history owes her!”

“Alright, I’m sure you’re gonna single-handedly make sure it pays up, but I don’t know where you’re going with this and I’d really like to get there.” The ache in her hip is telling her to lean to the other side, but her knees are telling her if she does that, they’ll riot. “I’ve had a cold morning and a long night.”

“Of marital bliss.”

“Of mediocre sex,” she grouses instead, then claps a hand over her mouth.

Frankie stares at her. Oh, she does not want Frankie staring at her right now. An underwhelming honeymoon is something they could joke about if it were about, you know, Robert. Or Sol. If it were fifty years ago. Not the morning after. Not in the middle of _this_.

“You married Mr. Tall Dark and Free Enterprise for _mediocre sex?_ ”

She can feel how red her cheeks are from here. “Well, I— People don’t get married just for— And, you know, we’ve talked about this, how, at our age… Look, Frankie, that’s not the point.”

“Oh yes it is.” She’s leaning forward, finger up and shaking an inch from Grace’s nose. “I know what’s happening here.”

“Buyer’s remorse?” she mutters.

“Self-flagellation!” Her hand falls again. The intensity in her stare doesn’t change, but her tone does. “You, married to some mediocre sex? I can’t believe I’m seeing it. I can’t believe, after, after, yeah! After _all_ the times we’ve talked about this! Don’t ‘our age’ me. Don’t you do that. Not now, not then, not ever, and especially not after you went out and married…” Frankie’s head is shaking again, and her voice is getting softer and softer, and it’s doing something to her, something that’s dragging up the weight in the pit of her stomach and making it cling and dig in nails right behind her ribs. “But I guess that means... you really mean it.”

What do I really mean, she wants to say. Please, please tell me, because I don’t think I know. But she doesn’t. The claws are in her throat, too.

“You actually came here because you didn’t know how to fix this,” Frankie says like it’s the least believable thing in the world.

“That’s what I’ve been saying all along!” she gasps out. “What did you think I was doing?”

“Humoring me,” Frankie says, and her voice is still soft, but this time there’s hurt in it, and the claws all throughout her chest are suddenly pinching so hard they bring tears to the corners of her eyes. “I thought this was just another one of those ‘I’ve made a decision you aren’t going to like, Frankie, so I’m going to pretend to be torn up about it so you won’t make me feel guilty’ conversations you _love._ ”

“I do love those,” she admits. Her voice is so choked that Frankie’s less-than-flattering impression sounded more like herself than she does.

“I know,” Frankie says. “Just like I know _you_ know being eighty doesn’t mean settling for mediocre sex.”

She sighs. “Can we not focus on that right now. Yes, you’re right, and yes, I’m the idiot who blurted that out, and yes, I know how weird this is gonna sound, but in this case, I really don’t care that much about the sex. I didn’t come here to talk about that. And I didn’t come here to humor you, either. I came here to apologize, to tell you I fucked up, then apologize again. Then, maybe, figure out what happens next.”

“Well, you call it off, obviously.”

“I got _married_ , Frankie. Not engaged. We’re past the stage where I leave him at the altar.”

“So what? You didn’t want to get married, you call it off!”

“Who says I didn’t want to?”

“Oh, come on! Ms. Wound Up Married. Or do I have to say ‘Mrs.’ now? Puh-lease. You never wanted to get married again. You want to know how to fix this? You rewind—” Frankie makes the arm gesture, the one like she’s yanking on a tug-of-war rope and like no kind of rewinding _she’s_ ever heard of. “—say ‘Just kidding, Madam Justice of the Peace! My hand slipped!’ Happens all the when you’re old. Blame a hand tremor.”

“I am not telling Nick I meant to put that ring on his thumb and slipped because I had a hand tremor.”

“Ooh, that’s good. Use that.”

“No, Frankie.”

“C’mon, why not?”

“Because I love him, Frankie! Have you not been listening to me?”

“Course I have,” she says in a huff. “You’re not listening to _me._ Love, marriage— Not the same deal. The first one’s about a lot of things. Remember the cowboys? No? Whatever. Anyway, the point is the other one’s about tying your whole lives together, and you don’t want to do that with Nick or you wouldn’t be here right now.”

“Says who?” Oof, she sounds pouty. Defensive. She hates when she sounds like this.

“Says you! When you said you’re not moving out! And he’s not moving in!”

“Maybe I’m just… Maybe we’ll just take a lot of vacations, did you ever think about that?”

“You won’t.”

“Why not?” She doesn’t like this either, this new determination in Frankie’s voice. This exact same _rightness_ she gets when…

When she’s right. And I’m wrong.

“Because! Because you said you need me! _We’re_ partners.” Frankie’s hand points back and forth between them. She’s wearing two bracelets on the same wrist that clink together each time she does it and that’s almost too much for her, that’s almost all she can hear. “I _am_ listening to you. I always listen to you. Even when you’re saying stupid things about synergy that make my bullshit detector go so far off the charts it _breaks_ I listen to you—and I just listened to you say you married Nick because you thought we’d had our run and were ready to move on with our own lives and you know what? No way. You coming here and asking me to tell you what you want? There’s your proof, Grace. We’re not moving anywhere, let alone _on_.” She says it like it’s mythical, fingers waggling, hands waving in the air. “Fuck being married. Love? Whatever. You love me and you wouldn’t marry me in a million years.”

For the first time in several seconds, Frankie’s mouth closes. Her eyebrows pull together. “You wouldn’t, right?”

A breath she’s been sucking in through each line of Frankie’s bulldozer rebuttal slams back out of her throat like she’s been punched. Before she can even get her lungs working again, Frankie is full steam ahead.

“Right. Because the point is, if you wanted your life tied up with his, you’d still be there. Wherever that is.” The frown deepens. “Do I know where that is? Where _do_ you go for sleepovers, anyway. Oh god, is it his office? Tell me it’s his office. Is his whole bedroom just full of those little waiting room couches? Is _that_ why you can’t have good sex…”

The knowing tone, the leading question, that “ah-ha!” look in Frankie’s eyes, the one she gets when she’s finally solved an impossible mystery in the least likely way, all comes together to finally get her lungs going again. It’s a spluttered laugh, three hard bursts of air, but it feels… okay.

“No? Hm. Well, that’s not the end of _that_ conversation, but unless you’re really planning to fly back off to the Mongolias with him this morning—and lemme tell you, my bullshit detector is still broken from last time but it would be beeping up a storm over that if it could—I think my point has been made.”

“It’s the Maldives, Frankie.”

“Beep, beep, beep, beep—”

“Alright!” She holds up a hand. “Alright. Point taken.”

But her hand is up in front of her eyes again, and there it is. She curls her fingers into her palm. She can’t see it over her knuckles, then, but she can still feel it. “Christ, he doesn’t deserve this. I’ve been blowing hot and cold since we met. I _never_ used to be this indecisive.”

“Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you don’t just say yes to things and actually have to figure out what you want.”

What she wants. Eighty years old and _just_ getting started. What _do_ I want.

“I… I still don’t know.”

“Yeah, well—” Frankie’s up again with a huff, sand raining down from the creases of the robe-dress and blowing in her face. “—I do. And it starts right there.” She points towards the house, then holds out her hand. “Home. With breakfast.”

She takes the help up. Her hip screams, there’s sand stuck to her mouth, but what else is new. “Breakfast… sounds great,” she admits.

“Good, because you’re making it.”

“Am I?”

“Yes,” Frankie cajoles, squeezing her hand. She tugs her closer, sneaks an arm around her waist beneath the sweater and starts to steer them up towards the path. It’s warm, it’s right. It’s simple. It’s something she wants. “Because _I_ am going to be very busy at the whiteboard, brainstorming up better excuses than a hand tremor for why you’re getting that thing off your finger.”

She groans. “Oh _no,_ not the whiteboard.” She’s smiling, though.

A few steps later, she leans over, presses a kiss to Frankie’s cheek. “Thank you.”

Frankie's stride falters. Against her hip, she feels a faint tremble run through Frankie's fingers.

She shakes her head and keeps them moving. "Thank me with waffles."

**Author's Note:**

> My brain is telling me right now this wants to be more than a one-shot but in the spirit of not saying things you don't mean, cowboy, there's no guarantee it will Keep telling me that.


End file.
